Between my trip to Mendoza and now, I have had quite the adventure! (Be forewarned: this is a long entry with lots of pictures!)
September 18th was Chile's (unofficial) 200th Birthday. I say unofficial because Chile "declared" its independence from Spain in 1810. It wasn't officially recognized as an independent republic until 1818. So technically, this year is the 200th year anniversary for Chile's self-proclaimed independence. But that doesn't matter, Chileans love to find any reason to throw a party and celebrate their beautiful country.
In anticipation of el Bicentenario, our program organized an opportunity for us to learn Chile's national dance, the cueca. Last Tuesday, we all grabbed our spare handkerchiefs and, with the help of some professional cueca dancers, took a jab at it. It was quite fun. It's a short dance which repeats some basic steps. What makes it interesting and entertaining are the ways that people use their handkerchiefs (on your head, swinging it above your head, behind your neck... basically anything goes). There are traditional cueca outfits too! Custom dresses for the girls and panchos and espuelas (spurs) for the guys.
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| Our cueca instructors |
From the lesson, I (along with 6 others) went straight to the bus terminal to begin my 6-day journey around the south of Chile, also known as the "lake district" - where the cueca was definitely a staple piece of knowledge.
We hoped on the bus at 10:30 and drove through the night, arriving in
Pucón around 9 am on Wednesday morning. We spent the morning exploring the town and getting settled in our hostel.
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| Madeline being a weatherwoman with the map of Pucón |
Pucón sits at the base of the beautiful volcano Villarrica. We planned to climb the volcano the next day so we spent a bit of time trying on our snow gear and climbing boots. Villarrica is covered in snow year round, which seems crazy because it has hot lava within it. In order to climb the active volcano and make it to the cumbre (the summit/crater), you also need crampons and an ice pick! (Swiss memories...)
With all of gear ready to go, we hopped on a little bus to visit another lake about 45 minutes outside of Pucón. We had originally planned on hiking around in the National Park, but we missed that bus.
Lago Caburgua was a really great alternative. Our bus driver told us that if we hiked around the lake, we would reach the "white beach" and it would lead us to some beautiful waterfalls...We never did find this path - we think he lied to us.
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| Lago Caburgua |
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| Here come the sheep |
After 20 minutes, we found some cute sheep along the side of the lake. After one of my friends took pictures of them, we continued following the trail around the lake. Unfortunately, so did the sheep.
It was quite funny, but also kind of scary at the same time. We all started running away from the huge pack of sheep that was now following us. But they kept pursuing us and bleating angrily. Who gets chased by sheep?!
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| Mary and Erica being chased by the sheep (Abby took this one) |
After a good laugh, we ditched the sheep and continued our walk around the lake. We heard some sort of mysterious drumming coming from ahead, so we continued along until we found the source: a bunch of hippies on the deserted beach. Hah. Not quite what we were hoping for.
After our hiking around for an hour, we decided to turn around because didn't think we were heading for the road or the waterfalls.
We stopped at Ojos de Caburgua on our way back, which were two waterfalls tucked in the middle of the forest - I think we were originally supposed to end up here, but I would have taken about 5 hours to walk from the beach.
We took a moment to represent Vandy at the waterfalls!
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| Having some fun after seeing the waterfalls |
Once we made it back to Pucón, we bought some groceries for our volcano hike, went out for dessert -
keke (cake!), and I capped of the night by slipping down a flight of stairs... Not my finest moment.
So the next morning, I - along with my sore keke (it also means "butt"...hahah) - woke up at 6:30 to get ready to hike the volcano. The weather was a bit temperamental, so we suited up and drove all the way to the base to see if we would be able to hike. With the terrible visibility, they cancelled our hike which was pretty sad. We were really excited about it. So instead, we played in the snow for an hour and went back to Pucón to make other plans.
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| Madeline, Erica, Me, Abby, and Mary in the snow |
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| Making snow angels |
We switched our bus tickets and made our way to the little town of Villarrica. We walked around the whole town and found more beautiful lakes.
After about an hour, we realized that Villarrica didn't have much to offer, so after reading through my guide book, we decided to go to a farm which was supposedly one of the largest in Chile. While trying to talk to some of the townsfolk about the farm, we bumped into a woman who helped us make other plans. She told us that she had a friend who had his own farm and it was way prettier than this other one. She invited us over to her house - and to leave our backpacks there (we kept our valuables just in case) - and called her friend to pick us up. He rolled up in his little white truck and the 7 of us warily hopped in... Martin sat in the front and he put the 6 girls in the back/trunk.
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| Here we are riding in the back of the truck |
Our spontaneous adventure turned out to be so worth it (
vale la pena!). José Ramón - a real life
huaso (cowboy) - took us around his farm which sat in the hills of Villarrica and looked over Lake Villarrica and the volcano. It was amazing.
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| The farm's view of Lake Villarrica |
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| Our legs weren't long enough to get over the barbed wire fences - so José Ramón helped us out |
Then José Ramón took us to meet his neighbor, a cute little Mapuche woman who made her own cheese! We toured around her little factory and talked to her for a while. Before we left, we bought two wheels of cheese to be nice. We ate it later that night on the bus - so good!
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| All of the cheeses! |
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| Walking around the farm |
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| Brett - This one's for you. |
Our last stop was a family brewery. We went to the little home of
Cerveza Crater (Crater Beer) and learned about the process. It turns out that this man engineered and constructed all of his equipment. He's still working on a machine to apply the labels - seems like the most simple out of all of the others he created.
Even though I don't really like beer, his was pretty good. He had a dark one that tasted like coffee.
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| Here is the owner with the machines used for fermentation |
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| The label station |
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| Pouring the beer so we could taste it |
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| Cheers! |
As we were leaving Villarrica, the volcano finally decided to pop out of the clouds. We would have climbed to the top had the weather cooperated!
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| El Volcán |
From Villarrica, we made our way to Puerto Montt where we spent what was left of the night in a hostel before waking up to catch a bus to the island of Chiloe. Our bus drove us to the tip of the land, went straight on the ferry, and then dropped us off at our first stop - the city of Ancud. Riding a ferry in a bus was quite odd. We thought it'd be a clever way to teach prepositions - in the bus, on the ferry, toward Chiloe... and so on and so forth).
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| The bus on the ferry - The rearview mirrors look like feelers |
Once we found our hostel in Ancud (with the help of a cute
"Chiloten" woman
- that's what people from Chiloe are called), we arranged a trip to go see
los pingüinos (PENGUINS!).
Our two taxis came to pick us up and we drove all through the countryside. It felt like we were driving through Ireland - I've never been, but what I imagine it would look like.
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| The penguin sanctuary |
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| Almost there! |
The taxis had a ford a river and then drove right on the beach to drop us off. Off-roading in taxis? Hilarious.
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| Standing with the taxi in front of the penguin sanctuary |
The men at the penguin sanctuary gave us lifejackets and told us to climb in the cart so that they could wheel us out to the boat.
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| The cart |
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| El Porsiacaso - The "Just in Case". A great name for a lifejacket. |
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| Some of the penguins wiggling up the rocks |
After our penguin excursion, we tried
empanadas con loco y queso. Loco is a type of fish is Chile that doesn't exist in the U.S. so I can't even translate it for you. I've heard that it's somewhat like an Abalone?
That night, we also tried one of the Chiloe's delicacies -
curanto. Traditionally, it's made in a hole in the ground with different types of meat, shellfish, potatoes, vegetables... basically anything you could imagine in a dish. Luckily Madeline and I split it because it's HUGE! Curanto is also said to be a natural aphrodisiac. There was a sign in the restaurant to prove it.
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| Curanto |
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| "Curanto - Helping people have great sex since 1826" |
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| That afternoon we also went to an old fort - fuerte. |
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| Ancud - the view from our hostel |
On the 18th - independence day - we left Ancud and made our way to the capitol of Chiloe -
Castro. Castro is home to houses on stilts known as
palafitos.
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| Palafitos |
We accidently found the parade? We had no idea what kind of celebrations we would find. Castro celebrated its armed forces, los bomberos (firefighters), and los carabineros (the police) among others. It was a really interesting parade. The route was about a block... and since we were the only gringos around, people were watching us more than they were watching the parade. We decided to entertain them by dancing the cueca. A couple at the parade asked to take a picture with us. And later some man just videotaped us standing in a circle and talking... Not sure why we are such a novelty? I guess they don't see many foreigners.
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| Carabineros |
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| Catedral de San Francisco |
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| Listening to Chilean music and dancing the cueca |
After the festivities, we took a little trip to Achao - a really small town where we found Chiloe's oldest church (the island is also known for all of the churches). Although there wasn't very much to do since everything was closed for
el 18, we enjoyed walking around the beach and taking pictures.
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| The church |
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| The boats on the sand with a rainbow in the background |
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| We were there during low tide |
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| The sunset on the beach |
That night, 3 of us went to a fonda (big party) in the school gym for all of Castro. I danced the cueca with some Chileans. All in all it was a great independence day.
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| Dancing the cueca |
The next morning, we left the beautiful island of Chiloe and headed back to the mainland. Our next stop was
Puerto Varas - a town 20 minutes from Puerto Montt (i.e. our hostel). We spent the day exploring the German style town, finally found some
chicha de manzana - the traditional drink of the south, and tried to visit a waterfall but it was closed by the time we got there. We capped off the day by finding a large
kuchen (the German word for cake) for Martin.
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| Lago Llanquihue |
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| The church in Puerto Varas |
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| The feria we found with tons of Chilean food - and chicha! |
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| Our failed waterfall attempt - we hopped off the bus after a 40 minute ride, ran across the road, and got on another bus to go back. |
Once we got back to Puerto Montt for the night, our hostel owner invited us out with her - to bars,
fondas, who knows where else. But most of us passed on the opportunity out of exhaustion.
We woke up the following morning to being our 13 hour journey back to Santiago. Mary wanted to see the countryside in the daylight. It was really beautiful to see all of the regions as we drove north. I read a whole book (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), listened to music, watched 5 movies, and saw the sunset (on one side of the bus the sky was red, yellow, and orange and the other side was blue and purple with the
Cordillera and the moon in the distance - breathtaking). But being on a bus from 9am to 12:30am wasn't really in the plans. We hadn't planned for almost a 16 hour ride - especially with people getting carsick. Everyone coming back from south of the city has to enter on the same highway, so we hit some ridiculous
taco (traffic).
But we finally made it to our houses by 1:30 - safe and sound, and definitely cultured.
**There are SOOO many more pictures, so if you'd like to look CLICK HERE**
